A quick update...

So it's 11:46pm here and I'm really tired. I haven't updated since Sunday, though, so I figured I'd drop a few lines to tell you how my first two teaching experiences went! My lesson on Monday (about similes and metaphors) was amazing! The kids, who were labelled intermediate/advanced were actually SUPER smart, and knew a ton of English. I was a little intimidated, but my Camp Instructor (CI/overseer) told me they're definitely advanced, and they're a special group because they're advanced but they're all elementary or early middle school. It was crazy! They seemed to have a good time with the activities, and Kiehl (my CI) complimented me on how well I did with getting them interested and involved in the activities. I was so nervous all day, because I didn't know what to expect, but as soon as I got in front of them, it just went away and I made myself have fun with it. I think the kids had fun too, which is most important. I was worried I would have to drag answers and input out of them, because especially lower-level Korean school doesn't really focus on creative thinking and figurative language, but they were doing so well that I even got to the Shakespeare. We closed by talking about the phrase:

"All the world's a stage
The men and women merely players.
They have their entrances and exits."

And they were super smart getting that people are actors on life's stage and their entrance is birth and exit is death. Wow. Good thing time was up at that point! That experience may, however, end up being misleading, because as they say, we're very unlikely to end up with many students that advanced at our regular schools (although some of us will). The camp that's being run here at Chuncheon by the Fulbright program is one of the most prestigious and well-known/respected immersion programs in Korea, so it attracts super-smart (and probably well-to-do) kids.

That was yesterday. I didn't go running (fail!), took a two-hour nap, and then spent most of the night scrambling to get my part of today's club activity done. Today I presented a lesson (that I designed) with two other ETAs, Dana and Jon. It was about haikus (the 5-7-5 syllable poems) and it went really well too. It was cool because there were only 6 students in the "club," and the activities worked really well. First, we played a game where they worked in teams to determine the number of syllables in words, phrases, and sentences. (Koreans often have a difficult time with pronunciation because they don't have consonant blends [br, pr, fr, and so on], so they had extra syllables. The name Smith, when written in Korean, is seu-mi-seu--three syllables long... You can see how that would be a problem for pronunciation.) So they counted consonants and competed against the other team (3 on 3) pub-quiz style, and seemed to have fun.

Then I told them what a 'haiku' was. (1. a type of poem; 2. from Japan; 3. popular all over the world now; 4. used to be about nature, now about anything; 5. special form (3 lines per stanza, 5-7-5 syllables.) Then I gave each student a line from a haiku I wrote and we put it in the proper order. Want to read the haikus I wrote? Yes, I think you do. The one we did together as a class was called "Fire Safety." I found the first stanza on the internet and wrote the second.

"Fire Safety"
Lanterns light the path
Until I trip, they tumble—
The house is on fire!

Quick, get some water.
My picture of Johnny Depp!
I love him the most.

"Flirting"
Hwi-Kyun likes Gwi-Ohk.
He thinks she is very cute.
So what should he do?

Flowers, chocolates,
a love note in her locker.
“Will you be my girl?”

"American Teachers"
Americans come
to teach English. Taste kimchi
for the first time. Wow!

Too spicy… hot mouth.
Give me Coca Cola, please!
Next time, patbingsu.

*Patbingsu is a cool kind of Korean ice cream, that includes red beans, shaved ice, raw fruit, and some ice cream. It's surprisingly good. So yeah, I was pretty proud of those haikus, and the kids had fun with them. They had to put them in the correct order and then read them, and they laughed.

The best activity, though, was when we wrote our own haiku as a class, madlibs style. We asked them for parts of speech and filled them into a haiku with blanks that I wrote, and it ended up being really silly and fun. They laughed and enjoyed it, which was cool, and I think they probably learned something at least. So yeah, I was really satisfied with it.

I'm a little nervous about tomorrow, because I'm teaching with someone else, and we're working with the advanced kids, so I'm imagining that they will be enormous and know English better than I do. (Possible: there are always a few who went to Canada to learn. Fact: they will not be enormous.) But we'll see. I'm sure it will be fun and great. I hope.

Then, tomorrow's the big day when I find out where I will be placed for the rest of the year, and hopefully a little about what the school will be like! I'm way excited, and will definitely be blogging tomorrow evening to let you know what the verdict is!

Okay, time for bed.